New update v4.2 for the Windows Phone Central app ready to download, includes lock screen wallpaper support

It's time for another update to our official Windows Phone app, and this one brings functionality many of you have requested: lock screen wallpapers. If you're a die-hard fan of the site and just can't get enough Windows Phone news, or even want to bring the news front and center for a week or so, you can enable our app as your wallpaper provider to get the latest headlines on your lock screen. Our wallpaper colours can also be customised with the full range of Windows Phone accents, and you'll even get article images appearing when you're using our flip tile. Find and enable all of these options from the app's settings screen.

That's not the only new feature thought, we've also finally included support for playing videos through Metrotube, switched to the Nokia advertising exchange (for free users only of course) and updated Unification support with in-line images. See below for the full changelist as well as a few samples of what you can do when customising our lock screen.

You can go minimalist, or more wacky with our wallpaper (far right inspired by Lumia 620 'Dual Shot')

Added lock screen wallpaper support - now get the latest news directly to your customisable wallpaper (WP8, paid version only)

Improved flip tile reliability

Added option to view videos in Metrotube (WP8 only)

Updated Unification support with images

Unifcation notifications are now sent to confirm enabling or disabling of the service

Trial: Now using Nokia Ad Exchange for adverts

WP7: Fixed bug where large image quality was not available

v4.2.8 is available right now in the marketplace, you can download it from this link (and whilst you're there feel free to leave a review!). Remember if you'd prefer not to buy the app the trial is our completely free option which will never expire, it just includes ads and has a few of the more premium features disabled.

As we say every time an update reaches the public: we really do value your feedback and opinions, so please get in touch through the forums, comments or the app help screen if you've got any suggestions, comments or even if you'd just like to tell us you're happy with the app! I'd just like to round off this announcement by saying thanks to our own Rich Edmonds and Sam Sabri for their original wallpaper designs which inspired this lock screen.

I cant make it look like in the article. Where do I choose Iconic? I have the article-picture at the top that pushes everything else down, maeks it messy. Screenshots above looks alot cleaner.
All settings I have on Lockscreen-pake is enable/disable and colors.
Am I missing some settings?

I like the kind of updates as well as the new feature. I think viewing the video with metrotube will be my next favorite features besides the fantastic spree of news and coverage about anything windows phone. Great job!!!

Really love the app, but one comment I have had for some time was the offline notification... When I am in the subway I love being able to read the articles that have already loaded (absolute best feature to the app), but it also constantly bugs me with a message saying that the app could not reach the servers. This happens every time I open an article or go back to the app home-screen.

There may be no way around this, but I would love if there were a less intrusive way of displaying this--it almost always pops-up right when I am in the middle of an article.

Yes I've been meaning to improve that experience for a while now but it keeps dropping down the list of importance I'm afraid. I'll pin it up there for the next release and see what I can come up with :)

Fantastic :) Not sure what is possible programmatically, but I would love just something like a "offline mode - last updated at XXXX" subdued text line at the top of the page/article. Still, not a major issue and, next to games, it is my most used app for the large periods of time I spend on the subway!

Yes it's absolutely possible. But you need to either be using the iconic live tile or the plain count type on the flip live tile (OS limitation means they are the only ways to set the count). I'll change the tile set-up screens next update to make this more clear

There is a fix for some live tile issues in this update yes. But there is also a long standing problem with live tiles which I sometimes see as well. Follow the guide I wrote here as it tends to work for me: http://www.wpcentral.com/fixing-problems-background-tasks-windows-phone just make sure after you disable all tasks you restart your phone before continuing :)

For now I've decided to go the route of a quick tap to make the choice when you want to play a video. I may change that to use a default instead at a later date, but personally I think this experience makes more sense. When you're out and using mobile data you may prefer to use the YouTube app as it's the least data consuming of the three options.

As a long time supporter of the WPCentral app I can only say thanks to Jay for all the amazing hard work he puts in to this. I paid for it as soon as I had tried it out because I knew it was a quality app.

Jay, if you got a WP8 app up and running I want you to know I'd gladly pay like £4.99 for it. Keep coding old chap, you're doing a bloody marvellous job of it!

They're actually not files interestingly :) They are rendered on the fly with XAML code so that they can stretch, contract and change colour according to the content. However if you're on WP7 you can still use the wallpapers we provide in the "Wallpapers" section of the app :)

Just updated the app on my Lumia 900 now the app crashes when i start it. To be exact it crashes when it tries to update the news. So i get to see the layout and after that crash.
I tried to turn the phone on/off. Also I tried to delete and install the app again,still the same problem. :(:(

Hi Atomic, are you using the paid or free version of the app? Both were tested before being sent out so not sure what's going on here. Get in touch with me on jay AT wpcentral DOT com and I'll see if I can help you :)

Love it how you guys keep tweaking this great app. Problem is that we're getting too many different options for our lockscreens now and it's getting harder to choose which one to use. Keep up the great work

Remember I'm an associate of the site, I'm not employed by the Mobile Nations guys at all :) They give me relative free reign when it comes to adding features and changing things but the overall direction of the app, the content available, and the APIs which the app uses are all owned by Mobile Nations.

That's the other live tile not your lock screen. It means you've selected the iconic tile and still have the other tile pinned.

Basically when using the iconic tile we have to create a second tile thanks to a limitation in the OS which doesn't allow apps to change their default tile's type (it's really annoying). So I set the main tile to be a dummy tile with just the count on it, that's how the lock screen count gets updated at the bottom of the page.

You can go ahead and un-pin that dummy tile it will just get silently updated in the background, and make sure your iconic tile is put in it's place.

Great work as usual. Your spoiling us customers =D
Here's a crazy suggestion that would be cool AND useful. Work with the app "simple calendar" so entrys can be on the lockscreen below your beautiful top news. That would be not only cool, but useful. Just a thought, keep up the great work.

WPCentral has completly taken over my phone. Its everywhere lock screen, voice command, large live tile. I even have a small tile direct jump to the forums.Its amazing to me how connected I am to my favorite website. Jay once again this is the most amazing app in WP. I am glad you are on our side and using your supper powers for good.

Great idea.. But I think that I'm experiencing a bug or something, all I can see after setting WPcentral as my lock screen provider is a black and white lines with a misplaced WPcentral logo in black. I got a HTC 8x unlocked.

Hmm that shouldn't happen, can you open the app, hit refresh on the news screen and wait for it to completely load? Wait about 2 seconds after it loads and then see what your lock screen looks like. Thanks in advance

yeah thats a nice response, there was another problem that doesnt always happen, after posting a comment it scrolls to the top and just before scrolling down to the last comment the app automatically scrolls up and i have to exit the app to solve it

Hi Guys,
Finally gotten round to actually joining up on this most excellent site!
Question about the lock screen, I don't seem to have the option to make it my lockscreen in either the app, or the lockscreen settings in the phones setting menu.
Using: Nokia Lumia 900 with Ver 7.8, using the paid version of the app.
Many thanks!

No problem, thought I was going nuts or something! You may want to just add that as a little note in the update description. (WP8 only) or something.
Love the app, its fluid and intuitive, keep up the awesome work!

hey jay, any thoughts on the commenting experience. I really like how it works and looks but find replies a bit frustrating in that you can't differentiate between levels after the first one. would love to see some sort of baconit-like view or maybe something as simple as showing who the comment is in replay to..?

I receive an email to say i have a reply to a comment. But when i go to the app, you cannot see the reply without going to the right article, then finding the reply. Would be great to see a section for replies when you open the app.
Also cannot reply to email to reply to a comment.

All I have to say is Jay is amazing can people please buy the app there are only a handful of apps with such a rich experience for 99 cents we should be supporting these developers hard work when the lot of us complain about the lack of apps on the free version of this app anyways cheers to Jay for another great update!

How frequently does the lock screen update itself? This morning I woke up and the lock screen didn't mention any unread articles but when I unlocked the phone, the app's live tile had an unread article count of 3.

start up time is slower than the old version and moving from article to images and back takes more time, in fact it froze my L920 today.
Not sure if it is the app or my phone, but I never had these issues with my phone earlier.

Lock screen wallpaper support is not available in the free version, it looks like I've overlooked a situation where users can try to enable it when they are on the free version but it simply will not work. I'll look into this immediately

Hey Jay! Im having issues on my HTC HD7 running 7.8 when tapping on the native and YouTube video links. It says I can't play the video without the YouTube loader app...but when I two the link, it says it's unavailable for my device. Am I doing something wrong?

Still having issues, Jay. Just updated today again. But the app will still not allow me to play videos either with YouTube or in the "Browser" option. It links me to the WP8 YouTube Loader app page. I have the 7.8 version already. It wasn't until two updates ago that this happened.
HTC HD7 running WP7.8